5 ms·

If you went to school in the last 30 years, or popped on the news during that time, I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront propert

If you went to school in the last 30 years, or popped on the news during that time, I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront property. I say this knowing brilliant enginners with homes they are still paying off in New Orleans. Why? You must know the return will be terrible, and it is just a temporary luxury, at a steep price, right? Are people in general this head-in-the-sand or is it really that hard to grasp?

wlesieutre 10y ago
That or gambling that the rest of us will be forced to bail them out for their idiocy
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
maxxxxx 10y ago
Just lobby for subsidized insurance or direct bailout when something happens. The New Orleans people were just not rich enough. If West Palm Beach gets flooded we all will pay for it.
- AndyMcConachie 10y ago
  I really hate the fact that you're exactly correct.
phkahler 10y ago
I've always wondered about that simply from the hurricane risk. It seems the hazards of the coastal areas are subsidized by the rest of us. Even in this article we find this atrocity: "The effects of climate-driven price drops could ripple across the economy, and eventually force the federal government to decide what is owed to people whose home values are ruined by climate change." Nothing is owed to these people. The sea has always been a hazard. Ocean levels have always fluctuated. That doesn't change just because someone spends a bucket of money to build a house there.
philipkglass 10y ago
I can take a few guesses at how people might make these mistakes without being exceptionally delusional: - Estimates of climate change in the scientific literature tend to be conservative. Scientists often publish "at least" projections that lay readers might read as "up to". Especially if readers are consuming multiply digested-and-regurgitated versions of scientific reports (primary literature -> university press office -> Gizmodo). - Considering average effects without accounting for extremes: e.g. visualizing "X centimeters of sea level rise by 2050" for a property near water without accounting for what that higher average level means during the worst storm of a decade. - Thinking that you'll have enough warning before everyone else's irrational exuberance evaporates that you can go with the herd for the foreseeable future. With something as big as a home purchase, most Americans will sadly only get one chance to learn this lesson the hard way.
- ergothus 10y ago
  In addition, they often talk in terms of centuries, not "in your lifetime" and definitely not "while you're still young enough for it to change the course of much of your life".
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    The IPCC reports typically go out to 2100. This might imply a couple of ideas to lay readers that aren't actually in the report text: - I only need to worry about this if I live until the year 2100. - After the year 2100 the trend lines will stop going up. If humans are ready for the effects of AGW in 2100, we're sorted away for the rest of history.
bilbo0s 10y ago
Thinking about this a bit more... I'm wondering if this engineer is really gambling? There's no question that a lot of people who buy ocean front property probably are... but I wonder if (s)he has a method to their PARTICULAR madness? Ports are necessary to a nation for reasons of infrastructure and logistics that I won't go into right now. However, this is not to say that Miami or Myrtle Beach are as important as Houston or... say ... New Orleans. The reality is that there are certain ports that are more critical to the continuance of the US than others. And I'm hard pressed to think of two ports more critical to our survival than Houston and New Orleans. If those two were to disappear tomorrow, I'm pretty sure the rest of us would find out the hard way why they were important. (I'm not a petro-chemical engineer myself, but I was at Halliburton for a bit, and metallurgy alone to replace 5 or 6 trillion dollars worth of pipelines would be staggering.) So given the criticality of certain ports... maybe there are people out there identifying the "ocean front property" that the US cannot live without... and buying it up where it is affordable? They wouldn't be so much gambling... as they would be seeing where resources will have to go... and getting there first.
cromulent 10y ago
Certainly a lot of people are delusional. However, not all waterfront property is so vulnerable as Florida. Oceanfront, sure. Seafront, somewhat. Lakefront, not so much.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  Hope you are avoiding glacier lakes :-)
  - cromulent 10y ago
    I live in a country with thousands of non-glacier lakes, that is rising from the sea due to post-glacial rebound :)
scholia 10y ago
> I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront property. I expect most of them not only bought property, they voted to make a coal-supporting climate-change denier president....
thesmallestcat 10y ago
Brilliant engineers make good money. So they can pause to enjoy life, and do unwise things like purchase waterfront property when sea levels are rising. Why shouldn't they? Does everything have to be an investment? I'm guessing you don't criticize people queueing up for properties in the Bay Area, where the Big One could happen any day, and while it will probably be in the East Bay, we really can't say for sure. And in that case, you don't just lose your basement, but possibly your life. In my opinion there are quite a few "heads in the sand," as you put it, on the west coast.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  The possibility of an earthquake, damaging a building build to withstand one, vs the eventuality of your land being underwater are distinct in my mind. That being said, the rink of earthquake has been observed and baked in to insurance, while sea level rise is only now becoming a factor. Your point about doing 'unwise things' because you have the money is well taken, and most waterfront property, like other highly depreciating assets, are a vanity thing, so I get that point well.
Arizhel 10y ago
Brilliant engineers frequently aren't that smart outside their narrow domain of expertise. They're also very frequently politically conservative, religious (so they believe unscientific things), and have been shown in studies to have traits making them more likely to become terrorists (they exhibit extreme black-and-white thinking). It doesn't surprise me at all that your "brilliant engineers" think climate change is a hoax and have bought waterfront property in a flood zone. BTW, I'm an engineer (EE) myself, so I see this stuff in my colleagues (maybe not the terrorism stuff so much, but definitely the religion and conservatism).

wlesieutre 10y ago

That or gambling that the rest of us will be forced to bail them out for their idiocy

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

maxxxxx 10y ago

Just lobby for subsidized insurance or direct bailout when something happens. The New Orleans people were just not rich enough. If West Palm Beach gets flooded we all will pay for it.

AndyMcConachie 10y ago
I really hate the fact that you're exactly correct.

phkahler 10y ago

I've always wondered about that simply from the hurricane risk. It seems the hazards of the coastal areas are subsidized by the rest of us. Even in this article we find this atrocity: "The effects of climate-driven price drops could ripple across the economy, and eventually force the federal government to decide what is owed to people whose home values are ruined by climate change." Nothing is owed to these people. The sea has always been a hazard. Ocean levels have always fluctuated. That doesn't change just because someone spends a bucket of money to build a house there.

philipkglass 10y ago

I can take a few guesses at how people might make these mistakes without being exceptionally delusional: - Estimates of climate change in the scientific literature tend to be conservative. Scientists often publish "at least" projections that lay readers might read as "up to". Especially if readers are consuming multiply digested-and-regurgitated versions of scientific reports (primary literature -> university press office -> Gizmodo). - Considering average effects without accounting for extremes: e.g. visualizing "X centimeters of sea level rise by 2050" for a property near water without accounting for what that higher average level means during the worst storm of a decade. - Thinking that you'll have enough warning before everyone else's irrational exuberance evaporates that you can go with the herd for the foreseeable future. With something as big as a home purchase, most Americans will sadly only get one chance to learn this lesson the hard way.

ergothus 10y ago
In addition, they often talk in terms of centuries, not "in your lifetime" and definitely not "while you're still young enough for it to change the course of much of your life".
- philipkglass 10y ago
  The IPCC reports typically go out to 2100. This might imply a couple of ideas to lay readers that aren't actually in the report text: - I only need to worry about this if I live until the year 2100. - After the year 2100 the trend lines will stop going up. If humans are ready for the effects of AGW in 2100, we're sorted away for the rest of history.

bilbo0s 10y ago

Thinking about this a bit more... I'm wondering if this engineer is really gambling? There's no question that a lot of people who buy ocean front property probably are... but I wonder if (s)he has a method to their PARTICULAR madness? Ports are necessary to a nation for reasons of infrastructure and logistics that I won't go into right now. However, this is not to say that Miami or Myrtle Beach are as important as Houston or... say ... New Orleans. The reality is that there are certain ports that are more critical to the continuance of the US than others. And I'm hard pressed to think of two ports more critical to our survival than Houston and New Orleans. If those two were to disappear tomorrow, I'm pretty sure the rest of us would find out the hard way why they were important. (I'm not a petro-chemical engineer myself, but I was at Halliburton for a bit, and metallurgy alone to replace 5 or 6 trillion dollars worth of pipelines would be staggering.) So given the criticality of certain ports... maybe there are people out there identifying the "ocean front property" that the US cannot live without... and buying it up where it is affordable? They wouldn't be so much gambling... as they would be seeing where resources will have to go... and getting there first.

cromulent 10y ago

Certainly a lot of people are delusional. However, not all waterfront property is so vulnerable as Florida. Oceanfront, sure. Seafront, somewhat. Lakefront, not so much.

maxxxxx 10y ago
Hope you are avoiding glacier lakes :-)
- cromulent 10y ago
  I live in a country with thousands of non-glacier lakes, that is rising from the sea due to post-glacial rebound :)

scholia 10y ago

> I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront property. I expect most of them not only bought property, they voted to make a coal-supporting climate-change denier president....

thesmallestcat 10y ago

Brilliant engineers make good money. So they can pause to enjoy life, and do unwise things like purchase waterfront property when sea levels are rising. Why shouldn't they? Does everything have to be an investment? I'm guessing you don't criticize people queueing up for properties in the Bay Area, where the Big One could happen any day, and while it will probably be in the East Bay, we really can't say for sure. And in that case, you don't just lose your basement, but possibly your life. In my opinion there are quite a few "heads in the sand," as you put it, on the west coast.

Neliquat 10y ago
The possibility of an earthquake, damaging a building build to withstand one, vs the eventuality of your land being underwater are distinct in my mind. That being said, the rink of earthquake has been observed and baked in to insurance, while sea level rise is only now becoming a factor. Your point about doing 'unwise things' because you have the money is well taken, and most waterfront property, like other highly depreciating assets, are a vanity thing, so I get that point well.

Arizhel 10y ago

Brilliant engineers frequently aren't that smart outside their narrow domain of expertise. They're also very frequently politically conservative, religious (so they believe unscientific things), and have been shown in studies to have traits making them more likely to become terrorists (they exhibit extreme black-and-white thinking). It doesn't surprise me at all that your "brilliant engineers" think climate change is a hoax and have bought waterfront property in a flood zone. BTW, I'm an engineer (EE) myself, so I see this stuff in my colleagues (maybe not the terrorism stuff so much, but definitely the religion and conservatism).